Position in chronology
SAA 04 139. Will There Be a Rebellion against Esarhaddon? (AGS 108) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš, great lord, give me a firm positive answer] to what I am asking you! (2) [From this day], the 6th day of this month, the month Ad[ar (XII), to the 5th day of the month Sivan (III) of the coming year], [for 90 day]s and nights, my stipulated term — [within this stipulated term], (4) [will (any of) the] eunuchs and the bearded (officials), [the king's] entourage, [or senior members of the royal line, or] junior members of the royal line, or any relative of the king [whosoever], (6) [or the prefect]s, or the recruitment officers and te[am] comma[nders, or the royal bo]dyguard, or…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL]-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka [an-na GI.NA a-pal-an-ni] / [TA UD NE-i] UD 06-KÁM šá ITI an-ni-e ITI.⸢ŠE⸣ [a-di UD 05-KÁM šá ITI.SIG₄ šá MU.AN.NA TU-ti] / [a-na 90 UD]-⸢MEŠ⸣ 90 MI-MEŠ ši-kin a-dan-ni-a [i-na ši-kin a-dan-ni šu-a-tú] / [lu-ú LÚ].SAG-MEŠ šá—ziq-ni man-za-az—pa-ni [LUGAL lu-ú NUMUN—LUGAL IGI-MEŠ] / [lu-ú] ⸢NUMUN⸣—LUGAL EGIR-MEŠ lu-ú qur-ub LUGAL mim-[ma mál GÁL-ú] / [lu-ú…
Scholarly note
Extispicy query addressed to Šamaš, the sungod and patron of divination, edited by Ivan Starr (SAA 4, 1990). The king asks the deity to render a yes/no verdict on a political or military question. ORACC text P336086.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P336086). source
Translation excerpted from Starr, I. 1990. Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria. SAA 4. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa04/P336086/.
Related tablets
Related sources
Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.